The present invention relates to optical instruments, and more particularly concerns a pocket laser pointer with interchangeable parts.
The product commonly called a pocket laser pointer has become a popular item for professionals, salesmen, teachers, and others who give presentations involving projected images. Once developed for that use, it has found other uses among other groups of people as well. This device usually has a long, thin shape similar to that of a pen, and projects a thin pointing beam from one end. The technology for producing this beam can include a small semiconductor laser, but can also be a light-emitting diode or other existing or future technologies.
Early laser pointers employed a beam that produced a simple round dot as an image on a target surface. More recent laser pointers can produce other shapes and sizes, such as an arrow, an outline of an animal, and so forth. The beam shape and size are determined by a mask, lens, or other means for altering the cross section and/or other characteristics of the beam.
Frequently, a user desires to have the ability to produce beams having multiple beam characteristics, sometimes even during the course of a single presentation. The expense and inconvenience of carrying multiple laser pointers make that solution unfeasible. One laser pointer has multiple lenses mounted in a circular format so that different lenses can be rotated into the optical beam. Such a pointer, however, does not have the convenient pen configuration. The number and patterns of the lenses are fixed at manufacture.
Therefore, there is a need for a single laser pointer, especially of the pen-like configuration, that can modify the beam characteristics easily, inexpensively, and flexibly.